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Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

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Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#231

Post by shibapuppie »

cm2187 wrote: post #111
1saadcodes wrote: post #105

500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all

I don't understand the distinction you are making. If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market works. They can do that because of the lack of supply. Over the long term demand will rationalise and supply will adjust. But in between there is a squeeze, and the right price is the maximum price buyers are willing to…

"limited supply goes to the buyer who need it the most"

No? It goes to the buyer with the deepest pockets.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#232

Post by dawnerd »

What’s dumb is even older tech has gone up. Look at microsd and usb thumb drives. There’s a lot of price gouging just because they can. There’s a real shortage and then there’s just “it’s memory so price go up”

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#233

Post by progval »

forinti wrote: post #6
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #3

The situation is absolutely awful for anybody who needs significant memory or storage (or devices incorporating such). Even people who think they have enough for the next few years already could end up with an unpleasant surprise if they e.g. have a stick or two of RAM go bad or a GPU fry. I have a few machines with aging sticks that I'm hoping will manage to hold out until when/if things improve.

I've been using computers for more than 40 years now and the one component I have never seen fail is RAM. All the other bits in a computer I've seen fail.

Anecdata: a coworker found a single bit flip corruption in a file he wrote in his computer. He ran memtest86 on his memory, and which found one of the two sticks was defective. The computer otherwise ran perfectly fine for years; and we would have never noticed if the file format didn't have built-in checksums.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#234

Post by empiricus »

shibapuppie wrote: post #231
cm2187 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the distinction you are making. If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market works. They can do that because of the lack of supply. Over the long term demand will rationalise and supply will adjust. But in between there is a squeeze, and the right price is the maximum price buyers are willing to…

"limited supply goes to the buyer who need it the most" No? It goes to the buyer with the deepest pockets.

it is probable that you don't get the deepest pockets by wasting money. anyone that pays so much for memory means they expect to get even bigger value from that.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#235

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

It turns out supply and demand is a thing, and can go both ways. Remember that in 2001, memory prices dropped like a rock, from $300 to $80. A ton of memory capacity came online at the same time, the market was flooded, so prices sank. The loss of revenue then hurt the memory industry.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#236

Post by Keyframe »

cm2187 wrote: post #111
1saadcodes wrote: post #105

500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all

I don't understand the distinction you are making. If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market works. They can do that because of the lack of supply. Over the long term demand will rationalise and supply will adjust. But in between there is a squeeze, and the right price is the maximum price buyers are willing to…

What is cartelization for 500%, Alex.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#237

Post by elictronic »

cm2187 wrote: post #111
1saadcodes wrote: post #105

500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all

I don't understand the distinction you are making. If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market works. They can do that because of the lack of supply. Over the long term demand will rationalise and supply will adjust. But in between there is a squeeze, and the right price is the maximum price buyers are willing to…

I'm sure there will be no large scale leverage campaign against a country who is enabling profiteering at this level. No defense agreements removed, troops removed from the country, or large tariff increases around failed investments.

I'm sure it will only suck for the buyers. This has no effect on inflation and probably will be overlooked by the current admin.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#238

Post by nemomarx »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #225
mschild wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would they? Cartels aren't known for massively increasing production to satisfy all demand. Far from it I'd say, they're more likely to expand supply to such a level that they can still reap massive profits. Very few countries/companies have the knowhow and willingness to be able to build more. OPEC is a perfect example of this behaviour. They set hearly production goals to keep prices high. Or the Quebec Maple Syrup…

But are the memory chip producers acting like a cartel? In the past they have not. When there was a shortage, they increased production as rapidly as they could build the new fabs, crashing the price of memory.

Wasn't that bad for business last time? I could see them erring on slower build up because of how it went before, if they're not sure how long this demand will last especially

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#239

Post by empiricus »

paulpauper wrote: post #191
1saadcodes wrote: post #105

500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all

What is also interesting is no one predicted this in 2022-2025 as LLMs were gaining widespread use. It just suddenly happened--"boom!" memory shortage in mid 2025 to early 2026,and it caught everyone by surprise. It was understood that the biggest bottleneck was "compute", not the memory. Even experts, such as popular AI bloggers, industry leaders, and top podcasters failed to anticipate this. No one on twitter eithe…

I think Leopold of "situational awareness" fame predicted this, tried to make it widely known on podcasts and x, and still started billions worth of hedge funding based on this.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#240

Post by fckgw »

chriskanan wrote: post #219
1saadcodes wrote: post #105

500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all

Same thing happened with eggs in the USA with bird flu used as an excuse.

Which reversed in about 6 months and now eggs are are their lowest prices in nearly a decade.
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